CHAPTER XVI
THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION
I
The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series ofpictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that Icannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, andhow far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, forinstance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down overthe wide panorama of rural England, through a driving mist of fine rain.This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the factthat clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown toenormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world withtitanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that thisfigure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful ofdry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.
I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There were days when thesight of a book filled me with physical nausea, with contempt for thelittleness, the narrow outlook, that seemed to me to characterise everywritten work. I was fiercely, but quite impotently, eager at such timesto demonstrate the futility of all the philosophy ranged on the roughwooden shelves in my gloomy sitting-room. I would walk up and down andgesticulate, struggling, fighting to make clear to myself what a truephilosophy should set forth. I felt at such times that all the knowledgeI needed for so stupendous a task was present with me in someinexplicable way, was even pressing upon me, but that my brain was soclogged and heavy that not one idea of all that priceless wisdom couldbe expressed in clear thought. "I have never been taught to think," Iwould complain, "I have never perfected the machinery of thought," andthen some dictum thrown out haphazard by the Wonder--his conception oflight conversation--would recur to me, and I would realise that howeverwell I had been trained, my limitations would remain, that I was anundeveloped animal, only one stage higher than a totem-fearing savage, acreature of small possibilities, incapable of dealing with greatproblems.
Once the Wonder said to me, in a rare moment of lucid condescension tomy feeble intellect, "You figure space as a void in three dimensions,and time as a line that runs across it, and all other conceptions yourelegate to that measure." He implied that this was a cumbrous machinerywhich had no relation to reality, and could define nothing. He told methat his idea of force, for example, was a pure abstraction, for whichthere was no figure in my mental outfit.
Such pronouncements as these left me struggling like a drowning man indeep water. I felt that it _must_ be possible for me to come to thesurface, but I could do nothing but flounder; beating fiercely withlimbs that were so powerful and yet so utterly useless. I saw that myvery metaphors symbolised my feebleness; I had no terms for my ownmental condition; I was forced to resort to some inapplicable physicalanalogy.
These fits of revolt against the limitations of human thought grew morefrequent as the summer progressed. Day after day my self-sufficiency andconceit were being crushed out of me. I was always in the society of aboy of seven whom I was forced to regard as immeasurably my intellectualsuperior. There was no department of useful knowledge in which I couldcompete with him. Compete indeed! I might as well speak of athird-standard child competing with Macaulay in a general knowledgepaper.
"_Useful_ knowledge," I have written, but the phrase needs definition. Imight have taught the Wonder many things, no doubt; the habits of menin great cities, the aspects of foreign countries, or the subtleties ofcricket; but when I was with him I felt--and my feelings must have beentypical--that such things as these were of no account.
Towards the end of the summer, the occasions upon which I was able tostimulate myself into a condition of bearable complacency were veryrare. I often thought of Challis's advice to leave the Wonder alone. Ishould have gone away if I had been free, but Victor Stott had a use forme, and I was powerless to disobey him. I feared him, but he controlledme at his will. I feared him as I had once feared an imaginary God, butI did not hate him.
One curious little fragment of wisdom came to me as the result of myexperience--a useless fragment perhaps, but something that has in oneway altered my opinion of my fellow-men. I have learnt that a measure ofself-pride, of complacency, is essential to every human being. I judgeno man any more for displaying an overweening vanity, rather do I envyhim this representative mark of his humanity. The Wonder was completelyand quite inimitably devoid of any conceit, and the word ambition had nomeaning for him. It was inconceivable that he should compare himselfwith any of his fellow-creatures, and it was inconceivable that anyhonour they might have lavished upon him would have given him onemoment's pleasure. He was entirely alone among aliens who were unable tocomprehend him, aliens who could not flatter him, whose opinions werevalueless to him. He had no more common ground on which to air hisknowledge, no more grounds for comparison by which to achieveself-conceit than a man might have in a world tenanted only by sheep.From what I have heard him say on the subject of our slavery topreconceptions, I think the metaphor of sheep is one which he might haveapproved.
But the result of all this, so far as I am concerned, is a feeling ofadmiration for those men who are capable of such magnificent approvalfor themselves, the causes they espouse, their family, their country,and their species; it is an approval which I fear I can never againattain in full measure.
I have seen possibilities which have enforced a humbleness that is notgood for my happiness nor conducive to my development. Henceforward Iwill espouse the cause of vanity. It is only the vain who deprecatevanity in others.
But there were times in the early period of my association with VictorStott when I rebelled vigorously against his complacent assumption of myignorance.
II
May was a gloriously fine month, and we were much out of doors.Unfortunately, except for one fortnight in August, that was all thesettled weather we had that summer.
I remember sitting one afternoon staring at the same pond that GingerStott had stared at when he told me that the boy now beside me was a"blarsted freak."
The Wonder had said nothing that day, but now he began to enunciate someof his incomprehensible commonplaces in that thin, clear voice of his. Iwrote down what I could remember of his utterances when I went home, butnow I read them over again I am exceedingly doubtful whether I reportedhim correctly. There is, however, one dictum which seems clearlyphrased, and when I recall the scene, I remember trying to push theinduction he had started. The pronouncement, as I have it written, is asfollows:
"Pure deduction from a single premiss, unaided by previous knowledge ofthe functions of the terms used in the expansion of the argument, is anact of creation, incontrovertible, and outside the scope of humanreasoning."
I believe he meant to say--but my notes are horribly confused--thatlogic and philosophy were only relative, being dependent always in agreater or less degree upon the test of a material experiment forverification.
Here, as always, I find the Wonder's pronouncements very elusive. In onesense I see that what I have quoted here is a self-evident proposition,but I have the feeling that behind it there lies some gleam of wisdomwhich throws a faint light on the profound problem of existence.
I remember that in my own feeble way I tried to analyse this statement,and for a time I thought I had grasped one significant aspect of it. Itseemed to me that the possibility of conceiving a philosophy that wasnot dependent for verification upon material experiment--that is to say,upon evidence afforded by the five senses--indicates that there issomething which is not matter; but that since the development of such aphilosophy is not possible to our minds, we must argue that ourdependence upon matter is so intimate that it is almost impossible toconceive that we are actuated by any impulse which does not arise out ofa material complex.
At the back of my mind there seemed to be a thought that I could notfocus, I trembled on the verge of some great revelation that never came.
Through my thoughts there ran a thread of reverence for the intelligencethat had starte
d my speculations. If only he could speak in terms thatI could understand.
I looked round at the Wonder. He was, as usual, apparently lost inabstraction, and quite unconscious of my regard.
The wind was strong on the Common, and he sniffed once or twice and thenwiped his nose. He did not use a handkerchief.
It came to me at the moment that he was no more than a vulgar littlevillage boy.
III
There were few incidents to mark the progress of that summer. I markedthe course of time by my own thoughts and feelings, especially by mygrowing submission to the control of the Wonder.
It was curious to recall that I had once thought of correcting theWonder's manners, of administering, perhaps, a smacking. That was afault of ignorance. I had often erred in the same way in otherexperiences of life, but I had not taken the lesson to heart. I rememberat school our "head" taking us--I was in the lower fifth then--in Latinverse. He rebuked me for a false quantity, and I, very cocksure,disputed the point and read my line. The head pointed out very gravelythat I had been misled by an English analogy in my pronunciation of theword "maritus," and I grew very hot and ashamed and apologetic. I feelmuch the same now when I think of my early attitude towards the Wonder.But this time, I think, I have profited by my experience.
There is, however, one incident which in the light of subsequent eventsit seems worth while to record.
One afternoon in early July, when the sky had lifted sufficiently for usto attempt some sort of a walk, we made our way down through the soddenwoods in the direction of Deane Hill.
As we were emerging into the lane at the foot of the slope, I saw theHarrison idiot lurking behind the trunk of a big beech. This was onlythe third time I had seen him since I drove him away from the farm, andon the two previous occasions he had not come close to us.
This time he had screwed up his courage to follow us. As we climbed thelane I saw him slouching up the hedge-side behind us.
The Wonder took no notice, and we continued our way in silence.
When we reached the prospect at the end of the hill, where the groundfalls away like a cliff and you have a bird's-eye view of two counties,we sat down on the steps of the monument erected in honour of thoseHampdenshire men whose lives were thrown away in the South-African war.
That view always has a soothing effect upon me, and I gave myself up toan ecstasy of contemplation and forgot, for a few moments, the presenceof the Wonder, and the fact that the idiot had followed us.
I was recalled to existence by the sound of a foolish, conciliatorymumbling, and looked round to see the leering face of the Harrison idiotogling the Wonder from the corner of the plinth. The Wonder was betweenme and the idiot, but he was apparently oblivious of either of us.
I was about to rise and drive the idiot away, but the Wonder, stillstaring out at some distant horizon, said quietly, "Let him be."
I was astonished, but I sat still and awaited events.
The idiot behaved much as I have seen a very young and nervous puppybehave.
He came within a few feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping hishands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from theWonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom hewished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared toomuch, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish,goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began tosquirm along the ground towards us, a few inches at a time, stoppingevery now and again to bleat and gurgle with that curious, crooningnote which he appeared to think would pacificate the object of hisovertures.
I stood by, as it were; ready to obey the first hint that the presenceof this horrible creature was distasteful to the Wonder, but he gave nosign.
The idiot had come within five or six feet of us, wriggling himselfalong the wet grass, before the Wonder looked at him. The look when itcame was one of those deliberate, intentional stares which made one feelso contemptible and insignificant.
The idiot evidently regarded this look as a sign of encouragement. Heknelt up, began to flap his hands and changed his crooning note to apleased, emphatic bleat.
"A-ba-ba," he blattered, and made uncouth gestures, by which I think hemeant to signify that he wanted the Wonder to come and play with him.
Still the Wonder gave no sign, but his gaze never wavered, and thoughthe idiot was plainly not intimidated, he never met that gaze for morethan a second or two. Nevertheless he came on, walking now on his knees,and at last stretched out a hand to touch the boy he so curiouslydesired for a playmate.
That broke the spell. The Wonder drew back quickly--he never allowed oneto touch him--got up and climbed two or three steps higher up the baseof the monument. "Send him away," he said to me.
"That'll do," I said threateningly to the idiot, and at the sound of myvoice and the gesture of my hand, he blenched, yelped, rolled over awayfrom me, and then got to his feet and shambled off for several yardsbefore stopping to regard us once more with his pacificatory, disgustingogle.
"Send him away," repeated the Wonder, as I hesitated, and I rose to myfeet and pretended to pick up a stone.
That was enough. The idiot yelped again and made off. This time he didnot stop, though he looked over his shoulder several times as helolloped away among the low gorse, to which look I replied always withthe threat of an imaginary stone.
The Wonder made no comment on the incident as we walked home. He hadshown no sign of fear. It occurred to me that my guardianship of him wasmerely a convenience, not a protection from any danger.
IV
As time went on it became increasingly clear to me that my chance ofobtaining the Wonder's confidence was becoming more and more remote.
At first he had replied to my questions; usually, it is true, by no morethan an inclination of his head, but he soon ceased to make even thisacknowledgment of my presence.
So I fell by degrees into a persistent habit of silence, admitted mysubmission by obtruding neither remark nor question upon my constantcompanion, and gave up my intention of using the Wonder as a means togratify my curiosity concerning the problem of existence.
Once or twice I saw Crashaw at a distance. He undoubtedly recognised theWonder, and I think he would have liked to come up and rebukehim--perhaps me, also; but probably he lacked the courage. He wouldhover within sight of us for a few minutes, scowling, and then stalkaway. He gave me the impression of being a dangerous man, a thwartedfanatic, brooding over his defeat. If I had been Mrs. Stott, I shouldhave feared the intrusion of Crashaw more than the foolish overtures ofthe Harrison idiot. But there was, of course, the Wonder's compellingpower to be reckoned with, in the case of Crashaw.
V
Challis came back in early September, and it was he who first coaxed,and then goaded me into rebellion.
Challis did not come too soon.
At the end of August I was seeing visions, not pleasant, inspiritingvisions, but the indefinite, perplexing shapes of delirium.
I think it must have been in August that I stood on Deane Hill, throughan afternoon of fine, driving rain, and had a vision of myself playingtricks with the sands of life.
I had begun to lose my hold on reality. Silence, contemplation, along-continued wrestle with the profound problems of life, werecombining to break up the intimacy of life and matter, and my brain wasnot of the calibre to endure the strain.
Challis saw at once what ailed me.
He came up to the farm one morning at twelve o'clock. The date was, Ibelieve, the twelfth of September. It was a brooding, heavy morning,with half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, but it had notrained, and I was out with the Wonder when Challis arrived.
He waited for me and talked to the flattered Mrs. Berridge, remonstratedkindly with her husband for his neglect of the farm, and incidentallygave him a rebate on the rent.
When I came in, he insisted that I should come to lunch with him atChallis Court.
I consented, but stipulated that I must be ba
ck at Pym by three o'clockto accompany the Wonder for his afternoon walk.
Challis looked at me curiously, but allowed the stipulation.
We hardly spoke as we walked down the hill--the habit of silence hadgrown upon me, but after lunch Challis spoke out his mind.
On that occasion I hardly listened to him, but he came up to the farmagain after tea and marched me off to dinner at the Court. I wasstrangely plastic when commanded, but when he suggested that I shouldgive up my walks with the Wonder, go away ... I smiled and said"Impossible," as though that ended the matter.
Challis, however, persisted, and I suppose I was not too far gone tolisten to him. I remember his saying: "That problem is not for you or meor any man living to solve by introspection. Our work is to addknowledge little by little, data here and there, for future evidence."
The phrase struck me, because the Wonder had once said "There are nodata," when in the early days I had asked him whether he could saydefinitely if there was any future existence possible for us?
Now Challis put it to me that our work was to find data, that everylittle item of real knowledge added to the feeble store man hasaccumulated in his few thousand years of life, was a step, the greateststep any man could possibly make.
"But could we not get, not a small but a very important item, fromVictor Stott?"
Challis shook his head. "He is too many thousands of years ahead of us,"he said. "We can only bridge the gap by many centuries of patient toil.If a revelation were made to us, we should not understand it."
So, by degrees, Challis's influence took possession of me and roused meto self-assertion.
One morning, half in dread, I stayed at home and read a novel--no otherreading could hold my attention--philosophy had become nauseating.
I expected to see the strange little figure of the Wonder come acrossthe Common, but he never came, nor did I receive any reproach from EllenMary. I think she had forgotten her fear of the Harrison idiot.
Nevertheless, I did not give up my guardianship all at once. Three timesafter that morning I took the Wonder for a walk. He made no allusion tomy defalcations. Indeed he never spoke. He relinquished me as he hadtaken me up, without comment or any expression of feeling.
VI
On the twenty-ninth of September I went down to Challis Court and stayedthere for a week. Then I returned for a few days to Wood Farm in orderto put my things together and pack my books. I had decided to go toCairo for the winter with Challis.
At half-past one o'clock on Thursday, the eighth of October, I was inthe sitting-room, when I saw the figure of Mrs. Stott coming across theCommon. She came with a little stumbling run. I could see that she wasagitated even before she reached the farmyard gate.